STAGES

EU Member States are required to implement measures to ensure their marine waters
achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) by 2020. Defining what constitutes GES is
challenging. Advances are being made in marine research that can underpin environmental
assessments. The uptake of this knowledge is hindered by the lack of awareness of the
current research effort and outputs; and the lack of an interface between science and
policy. STAGES will work to directly address these gaps.

STAGES has carried out a series of targeted
support activities to develop additional scientific
understanding for assessing GES and offer solutions
to make this knowledge accessible, relevant
and usable by policy-makers and stakeholders
in the Member States affected.

1) The STAGES project has developed an
inventory of relevant EU and national
research projects and results relating to
the Marine Strategy Framework Directive
(MSFD), and will make this information
widely accessible to policy-makers and
MSFD stakeholders through the Marine

Knowledge Gate, a dynamic, searchable
online portal. The STAGES consortium
has performed a survey of more than
4,000 projects from EU and national funding
programmes with relevance to MSFD by
using an online questionnaire as main tool
to collect knowledge. The in-depth analysis
of the knowledge collected will inform
the production of five State of the Art
Synthesis Reports on major MSFD Themes:
1) Biodiversity; 2) Contaminants and
Nutrients; 3) Disturbances; 4) Commercially
exploited fish and 5) Hydrographical
conditions.

2) Areas with a need for further research were
identified in a series of three Workshops
aimed at identifying gaps and needs for
further research in: Monitoring Programmes,
Pressures and their impacts on marine ecosystems,
and Socio economic analysis under
the MSFD.

3) STAGES has also conducted a MSFD
Stakeholders consultation to put forward
a proposal for a long-term European science-policy
platform to bridge the MSFD
science-policy gap. Stakeholders were
targeted that represented International,
European, Regional and National levels
across a wide cross-section of marine sectors.
The results of the survey will be used
to inform the organisation of a Stakeholders
Workshop scheduled on 12 February 2014.

Modelling activities of the ACCESS project are
intended to estimate and interpret the impacts
of climate change on human activities in the
Arctic Ocean and vice versa. Modelling activities
importantly cross all aspects of the ACCESS project
to deliver practical policy and infrastructure
options for responding to the rapidly changing
Arctic Ocean. Ecosystem Based Management
(EBM) in particular and Marine Spatial Planning
(MSP) in general are key integration tools for
ACCESS. EBM and MSP are the links that relate
the basic research components of ACCESS.
Monitoring activities for long-range and longterm
observations of the Arctic Ocean including
in-situ and remote sensing observations of the
Atmosphere, Sea-Ice and Ocean, are a major
development for the ACCESS projectThrough close engagement with DG Environment
and MSFD stakeholders, STAGES has carried out
a range of tasks to achieve its objectives. A comprehensive
knowledge collection process was
performed with the aim of building the inventory
of MSFD-relevant research projects and
knowledge outputs. Through scientific foresight
workshops, MSFD knowledge gaps were identified.
Recommendations for a Science-Policy
Interface (SPI) will be based on stakeholder consultation
and assessment of existing structures,
processes and global best practices.

STAGES European Added Value:

MSFD is the environmental pillar of the
Integrated Maritime Policy (IMP) that provides,
for the first time, a Europe-wide policy framework
to holistically and sustainably manage
human activities in EU territorial waters.
It aims to support the continued development
of a sustainable maritime economy in Europe,
whilst protecting and restoring the environmental
health of Europe's marine environments.
To achieve this, multi-disciplinary and multistakeholder
cooperation at a European level
is needed. As part of 'The Ocean of Tomorrow'
2012 coordinated initiative, STAGES will contribute
to this goal.